Rudy flip-flops fastest

In a little-noticed aspect of the Republican presidential debate Saturday night, fromer New York Mayor Rudy Guiliani set a new speed record for flip-flopping. Many candidates do so from one year to the next or perhaps one month to the next, but Guiliani did it from one sentence to the next.

The moment came when he joined Sen. John McCain in trying to assert, contrary to logic, that immigration amnesty is not in fact amnesty. Both McCain and Giuliani want to permit illegal aliens to avoid the penalty for illegal entry to the U.S., which is deportation.

That's amnesty. Period.

Sen. John McCain managed to get himself hopelessly tangled up in this, as he usually does, but it was Giuliani who really managed to screw it up in historic proportion. First Giuliani proposed his immigration fix:

"I believe my plan is the best plan for doing that ... I think what you would do then is, you would say to the 12 million people that are here, come forward, get a tamper- proof I.D. card, get fingerprinted, get photographed. If they don't come forward, then you throw them out of the country. The ones who do come forward would have to pay taxes. They'd have to pay fines. If you pay fines, it is not amnesty. They would not get ahead of anybody else. They'd be at the back of the line. "

This is nonsense. The line in question is not in the United States. It is in foreign countries. Go to Mexico City, for example, and you will see people lined up for a block outside the U.S. embassy to apply legally for entry to the U.S. And since that line is in Mexico City, it follows logically that the back of that line is in Mexico City, not in Manhattan.

Having screwed that up, Rudy dug himself in deeper. Listen to this exchange with Mitt Romney:

GIULIANI: Charlie, if Ronald Reagan were here, who we all invoke, he would grab the microphone, say, "It's my microphone, I paid for it."

And Ronald Reagan did amnesty. He actually did amnesty. I think he'd be in one of Mitt's negative commercials. And he is the hero of our party. ... .

It is not amnesty. If you charge -- I did this more in my life than I did politics, meaning law enforcement -- if you charge fines, if you have impositions of conditions, it is not amnesty.

Ronald Reagan gave amnesty, saying they have to pay a fine, have to get on the back of the line, have a whole bunch of conditions...

ROMNEY: I thought you said that wasn't amnesty.

GIULIANI: That is not amnesty. That is not amnesty.

Rudy managed to flip in one sentence and then flop in the next sentence, from "Ronald Reagan gave amnesty" to "That is not amnesty."

It is a new record, one that Giuliani can take with him in his well-deserved move back to private life.